VERY Interesting!!
Now there are unconfirmed reports that the LHS pilot (the new guy) was operating on an invalid pilot’s license, issued by a training organization that recently had its authority to conduct training for pilots revoked.
Here is the information on flight crew certification from the NTSB accident docket:
http://dms.ntsb.gov/public%2F55000-5...3%2F543209.pdf
Looks like the information provided to the NTSB is that the licenses were in order.
Several thousand pages of information, plus audio and video files, were released when the docket was made public this morning:
Accident ID DCA13MA120 Mode Aviation occurred on July 06, 2013 in San Francisco, CA United States Last Modified on December 11, 2013 07:12 Public Released on December 11, 2013 08:12 Total 135 document items
As discussed extensively earlier here on PPRuNe, the autothrottle THR HOLD FLCH 'trap' is well known, and is present in all EICAS Boeings from the 757 onward. It looks like Boeing's position is that it is consistent with the original design philosophy of the automation to not intervene too much when the pilot is making manual inputs. If the autothrottles are off, they will 'wake up' to maintain speed but if they are on in THR HOLD mode, they are already 'awake' but intentionally not responding until they change to another mode e.g. SPD.
From NTSB questioning I get the idea that they are going to suggest that this autothrottle behavior be modified or at least covered more specifically in sim training.
I might have got myself into an undesirable situation on approach with some MCP mismanagement somehow but like most people posting here, I can't conceive not immediately reacting to low airspeed, sinkrate calls and red PAPI's below 1000 feet.
